Love Curse?
by little folly
Summary: "Jii-chan Lucy has put some sort of curse on me, whenever I look at her my heart beats really fast and my stomach feels like I'm on transportation!" ... "The only way to break a love curse is to kiss the person that cursed you!" Will Natsu be able to break the annoying love curse she has on him, or will he just make it worse?
1. Chapter 1

It was a normal day in the boisterous Magnolian guild Fairy Tail. Cana was on her daily date with the wine barrel, Mirajane stood behind the bar talking to Levi as Jet and Droy sat on adjacent barstools hanging on her every word. Grey and Elfman stood in the centre discussing what it was to be a man as Juvia nodded fervently at Grey's argument. However, in one corner of the guild Natsu Dragneel looked ill as he gazed in the direction of one Lucy Heartfilia. Suddenly his face lit up as a thought came to him and he dashed straight into the master's office.

The small man stood on his desk with his arms crossed behind him staring over the stunning view of Magnolia, thinking of nothing in particular, when a certain young mage interrupted his reverie.

"MASTER!" Yelled Natsu.

"Naaaaatsu?" Macarov turned around, "what is it?"

"Jii-chan Lucy has put some sort of curse on me, whenever I look at her my heart beats really fast and my stomach feels like I'm on transportation!" Natsu blurted out.

The impish man took a second to make sense of Natsu's word-barrage.

"Mmmmmm," Macarov paused and stroked his beard for what seemed like an eternity to Natsu.

"You love her," he replied contentedly.

"NANIIII?!" Natsu screeched.

Natsu sped over to the master and circled around him, examining him from every angle and rapping on his head.

"Jii-chan are you okay? You're getting old old man you should see Porlyusica and get some medicine."

The master stood patiently, hands crossed over his chest and eyes closed before he flung out his arms.

"Yamete! No curse can give you these feelings but the great and terrible curse of real love."

Natsu's mouth curved into a big grin.

"Whoooa so it is a curse! Tell me how to cure it so I can get back at her soon."

Frustrated, the little master expanded almost to the ceiling to look down at Natsu with piercing eyes.

"You baka!" but then a genius idea sparked in his giant head and he shrunk back down to size, hiding a cheeky smile. With a new air of dignity Macarov declared, "The only way to break a love curse is to kiss the person that cursed you!"

Natsu looked blank, then jumped and fist-pumped into the air.

"Sugoi! Master I knew you'd help me out!" and with that the dragon slayer sprinted out of the office, fists clenched, mouth open and fire in his throat.

* * *

Out in the great hall a brawl had started between Grey and Elfman, knocking over Cana's wine barrel - thus ensuring her participation in the combat. With this happening few noticed when Natsu burst into the room and scanned briefly for his target.

"Lucy!" He belted as he took her hand and led her out of the building.

"Naaatsuuu! What are you doing? Let go of me!"

The celestial mage barely kept her footing as Natsu dragged her along behind him. Around the side of the guild he released her hand and pointed at her with the other hand on his waist and a grin of victory on his face.

"Ha! I know how to break your stupid love curse!"

With that he grabbed both sides of her head in his hot hands and pulled her in for a kiss. As their lips touched Lucy was released from her paralysed state. "Nyaaaaaa!" she reeled back and slapped him hard on the cheek.

"What was that all about?!"

Natsu looked back at her, face as blank as a slate with a big red handprint on the side. He looked down and held his hand over his heart for a second then his face turned to utter confusion. He let out an awkward burst of laughter.

"AAAH HA HA HA nothing, I've got to go ja'ne!" and with that he ran off into the town and disappeared.

Lucy stood shock still and brought her fingertips to her lips. _What on earth just happened? Was that really her first kiss? But it happened so fast! And with that dense hothead Natsu?!_

She felt dizzy and leaned against the side of the guild.

_Natsu's kiss, his lips were so warm and with his hot hands over her ears she knew she could have melted into him if it weren't for her immediate shock._

_But this is Natsu we're talking about, his only emotions are anger and excitement, he's just your friend and partner…. and what did he say about a love curse?_


	2. Chapter 2

Meanwhile Natsu had wound up in a park in central Magnolia, on his knees, with his forehead pushed into the dirt ground. His head was spinning, his stomach constricted to abate the pulsating nausea and heat was coursing through him in mighty waves threatening to render him unconscious. Natsu pushed himself up slightly so that his face was inches from the ground, dust and pebbles fell from his forehead as he slowly focused his vision on the ground in front of him. He heaved in some air that he didn't realise he was lacking until, and a whole lot of dust along with it. He sputtered and coughed for the next half minute. _What the hell is happening to me?! I feel ten times worse after doing that! Damn that Lucy she's so smart I bet she knew that I would try to break the curse so she made sure that a kiss would increase the effects of the curse instead._

He threw his head back and let out a huge breath of fire in frustration._ Is this what Juvia feels all the time when she sees Grey? No wonder she is so crazy! I am going to get Lucy back so much for this._

Briefly the memory of Lucy's lips crushed against his flashed in his mind and his stomach clenched again. _Why would Lucy want to do this to me?! _

He decided to go back to the guild and plot his revenge over a nice cold ale.

* * *

After handing Natsu his ale Mira couldn't help wondering why he looked psychotic.

"Natsu is anything wrong?" Mira asked sweetly.

Natsu looked up at Mira and decided she might know something about girl curses, so he told her his story.

"What you kissed her?!" Mira exclaimed.

"Yeah, to get rid of the curse! I told you"

"On the lips?!"

"Yeah, what's your problem?" Natsu replied, irritated at her slowness.

"Natsu you know you should only kiss a girl on the lips if you like her?"

"What do you mean? I do like Lucy," Natsu asked curiously.

Mira looked at the young fire mage in disbelief. _How could he POSSIBLY be this dense?! Any normal person would be attuned enough to their own feelings to know when they were falling in love. But Natsu is not a normal person, _she reminded herself, _all he knows is extreme emotion and loyalty to his friends, romantic love is not something he has considered when he already harbors so much love for all of his friends. _Mira forced a smile and tilted her head to the side.

"Natsu do you know what love is?"

Natsu frowned, "ummm well everyone says that Juvia loves Grey so it must be like when you're so obsessed with someone that you want to follow them everywhere!" Natsu looked pleased with himself.

Mira sighed, "well it is true that love makes you want to be with that person all of the time but it is something deeper than that, it is when your body and soul yearn to be with the person and you feel empty when they are not there, and when they are there your heart cannot contain its happiness.

Mira's eyes had glazed over as she looked into the distance. When she came to she looked down at Natsu. He had both of his hands clasped around the sides of his tankard as he stared into space. His constricted pupils flickered left to right like he was sorting through thousands of memories. He looked so young and confused it touched her that he was only now contemplating the complex emotion of love. Finally his pupils dilated and he saw two Happys in his vision slowly converge into one.

"Happy?"

"Natsu! Are you ok?"

"Huh? Uh yeah!"

"Natsu you looked like a crazy person just now, are you hungry?"

Natsu's stomach rumbled in response

"Hahaha yeah I'm starving."

"Lets go and see if Lucy has any food!"

Natsu's heart thudded. _Lucy_.

"Yes Natsu let's go see Lucy." _Had he said her name out loud?_

"Aaaaaaaaah nah Lucy told me she was going out with uuuuh Levy for dinner tonight!"

Happy looked suspicious, "ok Natsu lets just get dinner here, Mira!"


	3. Chapter 3

Lucy sat down on her bed in her small terrace apartment. _What is Natsu up to?! I swear I will not get swept up in the idea of a love interest like I did that time Natsu just wanted Virgo! I have learnt my lesson, NOT happening!_

_He's probably doing something even more stupid this time, ok lets go over everything – he grabbed me in the guild – nothing out of the ordinary there – then pointed at me and shouted something really weird, what was it? He wanted to break MY love curse? What the hell does that mean?_

_I bet Grey put some stupid notion into his mind about a curse or something, or maybe Juvia tried to drug Grey into loving her and got Natsu instead?! Yes, something like that, Lucy, get a hold of yourself, it was only a kiss… just a friend punching your lips with his._

_I won't think about it any more, it'll be like it never happened, whatever game Natsu is playing, this is one I'm not going to play along._

With that Lucy resolved to get back to the guild and show Natsu that she wasn't the least bit affected by his lip invasion… after a quick appointment with Cancer.

* * *

Not long later Lucy barged into the guild with a look of grim determination and spotted the summit of a chicken-drumstick mountain before her gaze lowered to the two figures at its base.

Upon inhaling Lucy's light scent over the heavy roast chicken haze Natsu immediately burst into flames.

"Natsu!" Lucy and Happy cried in unison, utterly shocked at Natsu's spontaneous combustion.

Happy only just jumped out of the way in time, sprouting wings and swooping out some distance from this insane partner.

Lucy ran over to Natsu, bumping several chairs as she passed them. She stopped just short of his cocoon of flame "Natsu! What is going on?! Stop it or you'll burn the guild down!"

Natsu didn't stop, he swayed and fell to his knees, Lucy gasped and reached for him, burning her arm before his flames quickly diminished in his unconscious state. She cradled the limp boy in her lap and stared at his face in complete alarm. "Natsu! Natsu wake up!" Lucy yelled into his face and shook him as everyone in the guild crowded around. "What happened to Natsu?" What's wrong with Natsu?" "Is he okay?" "What's going on?"

One minute seemed like an hour before Natsu slowly opened his onyx eyes to see them reflected back in Lucy's big brown irises that were shimmering with unshed tears. Lucy smiled and hugged him hard. "Natsu you're ok!"

"Yeah what the hell happened?" Then he remembered.

The curse,

the sickness,

_the kiss,_

Lucy.

_Lucy!_

He needed to know something for sure.

"Lucy," he said, his face uncharacteristically serious. "Did you put a curse on me?"

"What?! No! What has gotten into you today?!"

"Nothing, um, sorry for earlier, you know when I…"

The whole guild had gone and pretended to busy themselves after Natsu woke up, sensing the intimacy between him and Lucy. Even Happy knew when to keep his boundaries, though he didn't hesitate to nudge Mira and murmur, "they liiiike each other."

Lucy quickly put her hand over the stupid dragon slayer's mouth before he could mutter another word. "Natsu you're delirious, let's get you some fresh air," Lucy was acutely aware that the whole guild was "subtly" watching them (subtlety was not a very familiar concept in Fairy Tail). She stood him up and pushed him out the front door and consciously headed opposite the side of the guild that Natsu had dragged her that very morning.

"Ok Natsu, tell me what's going on, if this is a game then I don't get it and it's not very funny."

Natsu signed and pushed his palm into his forehead. He couldn't think clearly with Lucy around him, he plunked himself down on the ground and willed his head to stop spinning and heart to stop throbbing. The last thing we wanted to do was scare Lucy but he himself was more confused than he had ever been. Somewhere he had stuffed up royally and hurt Lucy in the process. He looked up at the celestial mage and spotted a long burn along the side of her arm but she looked more worried about him, stupid Lucy always caring about everyone above herself.

"Let me have a look at that," Natsu said pointing to Lucy's burn.

Lucy looked down at her arm and seemed to only just notice the burn, the blonde mage conceded that Natsu wasn't going to answer her burning questions just yet so she sat opposite Natsu and held out her arm. Natsu took her hand and gently cupped her forearm. He glanced up at Lucy with guilt in his eyes then lowered his mouth toward the burn. Lucy tugged at her arm a bit, unsure what Natsu was doing but he held her arm firmly yet tenderly. He then began to suck in air just above the burn and as he did the warmth and pain were drawn out of the area. Lucy was dumbfounded, "I didn't know you could do that."

When he had gone over the whole burn Natsu explained. "I eat fire energy and most of the energy was still there in your arm."

Eating some of that fire energy and helping Lucy cleared Natsu's mind a little and he was able to recall the days events.

He looked back up into Lucy's enormous eyes and decided he'd have to explain himself, he owed that much to his partner, even if he could barely explain his actions to himself.

"Lucy…"

**Author's note: Hi everyone, I just wanted to say thanks to all the viewers and especially the reviewers for their lovely comments, they've really kept me going since this is my first story and I wasn't sure what to expect. Sorry this chapter has taken so long, I was putting it off for a while because it is so daunting trying to capture Natsu's character in tender moments. His soft side rarely surfaces in the anime/manga so we haven't got much to go off! **

**Anyone else super excited for the Natsu + Gajeel vs Sting + Rouge episode next week? It was epic in the manga so I'm gonna be on the edge of my seat for the anime!**


	4. Chapter 4

Despite her burn having dissipated under Natsu's careful magic Lucy couldn't help but be engulfed by a warmth that spread out from her core. Her excitable, reckless, utterly maddening teammate was someone that will do everything to help his friends and yet Lucy felt that this was profoundly different. The air was charged and heavy between them, his eyes had something else that she hadn't seen before. "Lately I've been getting all of these awful feelings around you, at first I thought it was just from traveling or eating too much but I did some tests and it was only when I looked at or smelled you."

Lucy did recall a few times in the last few days when she thought Natsu was acting more strange than usual; he would look at her very intensely and then look away for a little bit, or look away and hold his nose when he thought she didn't notice. Those times had made her very self-conscious as to whether she had bad body odour or something.

"I thought you were playing a trick on me so that got me all fired up and I wanted to get back at you,"

"Why would I want to put a curse on you? I'm not the type to use some underhanded trick like that on you," Lucy briefly thought it might be nice if there was a curse that could make Natsu more considerate and less destructive, but they are both just qualities that make Natsu Natsu.

Natsu shook his head and looked down, "Yeah I know that was stupid now, then master told me to kiss you to make it go away but that didn't work and Mira told me even more weird things."

_Macarov that old pervert_, Lucy thought.

"Did you ever think to just talk to me about it?!" Lucy felt a bit offended that her best friend hadn't come to her to help his problems, I mean, he came to her for absolutely everything else. She reached her hand out onto Natsu's knee to get his attention. The body contact shot an electrical impulse through his body. He looked away and pouted.

"I'm talking to you about it now ain't I?"

Lucy was not getting very far with this stubborn hothead. She would have to make sense of the situation herself for the sake of her thick partner. What could make him feel horrible around her? She didn't wear any perfume anymore since she knew that insulted his sensitive nose. She…. oh Mavis she was on her period! Lucy went blue, could Natsu _smell_ that? No, no, no, no, no this was so embarrassing!

"Lucy? You look as blue as Happy!"

It was Lucy's turn to look away, she began rigidly pulling out grass around her. "Uh. uh. uh. Natsu… Do you, uh, smell, uh, anything like, um, blood... around me?" Lucy wanted to summon Virgo to dig her miles into the ground rather than wait for Natsu's answer.

"You mean like one week every month when you get more scary? Yeah but every girl gets that, Grey told me it means that… Lucy?"

The celestial mage was officially broken; she could no longer function with this news from the dragon slayer. Natsu gazed at her face, her eyes were completely vacant, he couldn't help but just keep gazing at her, those deep brown eyes that he had seen laugh and cry, her mouth that was usually made for shouting at him could produce the most heartfelt smiles that only he had seen. Why did he suddenly want to kiss her mouth again? Such a strange thing to want to do to his best friend but it was as if his whole body agreed with him, he was transfixed by those small parted lips of hers. But somehow he couldn't bring himself to; he wanted Lucy to be conscious if he did it, he wanted her to smile when he did it and kiss him back. What's with all of these creepy perverted thoughts?

Lucy eventually started to show signs of life, she realized it was really quite funny that Natsu's absolute shamelessness made him seem mature for a boy his age when it came to female issues. So as much as she was abhorred by the fact that Natsu (and doubtless Gajeel too) knew her monthly cycle, she realized that as long as he didn't care, she shouldn't be fazed by it either – they had more pressing issues to discuss.

"Lucy you're back, you looked like Evergreen had turned you to stone ha ha ha," the fire-eater's wavering tone betrayed his uneasiness.

Lucy noticed that Natsu had moved a bit further away from her, and he was blushing! Natsu was blushing! And then it hit her like a tidal wave, what if Natsu did _like_ her and he had no idea! Her mind instantly wanted to shut itself in denial but her heart pounded in agreement. Her body then began to act on its own accord.

"Is this what you have been feeling?" She leaned over and grasped his hot hand, tugged him toward her and placed his slightly moist palm over her pounding heart. He looked at his hand wide-eyed, gulped, met her eyes, and slowly nodded.

**Authors note: Jeez that was a difficult one but there it is. **

**Also WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH no more FT anime for who knows how long! I am now paying daily visits to Mashima's twitter for any crumbs of information! Anyone else feeling this or am I just a bit too obsessed?**

**And thanks reviewers for the spelling tips, I should really check up on any Japanese spelling before I decide to throw some in! I definitely welcome critiques on spelling and grammar, they're really helpful :)**


	5. Chapter 5

She knew it; she knew it in her heart and soul that she had fallen for her immature, idiotic, completely insane partner, and even more insane; he had fallen for her too.

Her mouth opened and six short words came out.

"This is what love feels like."

Just as she gave voice to her powerful revelation the key-bearer's face turned beet-red. She removed Natsu's hand from her sacrum and suddenly became very fascinated by it, pulling at and toying with his fingers.

"Um, well, I mean, I think this is what it's like, I've never actually felt it before, but I've read about it in books and it sounds just like this and err well we've always been close and it's perfectly normal for a girl and a boy to have these feelings…"

Natsu's dizziness gave way to clarity, his nausea to a deep fire in his belly and confusion became understanding. The dense young mage finally understood what Mira had been talking about, he did love Lucy, he always had. Just now he knew it was the kind of love where he wanted to kiss her, oh Mavis did he want to kiss his crazy partner's soft, moving lips – oh she's still talking. He gripped her toying hands and leaned in to look piercingly into her eyes.

"So if we're in love then you won't slap me if I kiss you this time?"

This stopped Lucy's mutterings right in their tracks, Natsu's intense stare expressed that he wanted an answer, he was asking consent to kiss her! Her eyes flickered down to his close-pressed lips, yes, she wanted it.

With a tiny shake of the head Lucy affirmed, "I won't."

He kissed her, he kissed her with all that he was. And it was perfect, he dug his hands into her hair and the heat emanating from them sent her into a high of pure euphoric bliss. Just like his fighting he took her lips with exhilaration and confidence, gauging her every move and countering with his own.

Natsu stopped for air, eyes alight with fire and excitement, "whoa Lucy this is great! Is this what love is too?"

Lucy simply laughed and pulled him back in.

Fin

**Author's note: Done! Hope you all enjoyed it! Just a quick chapter to wrap it all up :)**

**MANGA SPOILER ALERT**

**Errmageerd DRAGONSSSS so many dragons! It's gonna be so cool in the anime, argh I miss it! Manga is good but I like colourful moving pictures haha**


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